Summary, Tips, and Tricks on Instrument Control **new** 2004/06/17 09:34:34.367 GMT-5 2004/06/17 09:35:49.316 GMT-5 National Instruments certification@ni.com Malan Shiralkar mshiralkar05@hotmail.com Harika Basana ilsai@rice.edu Elizabeth Gregory lizzardg@rice.edu National Instruments certification@ni.com National Instruments LabVIEW Instrument Control tips LabVIEW can communicate with an instrument that connects to the computer as long as you know what kind of interface it is and what cabling is required. Use MAX to configure and test GPIB interface cards, connected instruments, serial ports, and parallel ports. LabVIEW instrument drivers eliminate the need to learn the complex, low-level programming commands for each instrument. The LabVIEW instrument driver library is located on the LabVIEW CD. You also can download drivers from the NI Web site at ni.com. All instrument drivers in the library have the same basic VI hierarchy. Use the Instrument I/O Assistant to rapidly and easily build a VI to communicate with an instrument. You can control VXI, GPIB, RS-232, and other types of instruments. Serial communication is a popular means of transmitting data between a computer and a peripheral device such as a programmable instrument or even another computer.